Several weeks ago I was surprised to read on the Internet that there is the technology to go to the planet?

Question

Mars in ten days can anyone elaborate?

Answer 1

Mars in ten days, forget it, until we have fusion drive spacecraft. But NASA is seriously planning missions to Mars ~the year 2020 or so. Go to www.nasa.gov and read about the new Ares rocket under development, which is essentially specifically designed for the upcoming Mars missions. For a serious engineering discussion of travel to Mars, I highly recommend "The Case for Mars" by Dr. Robert Zubrin, PhD, available through Amazon and many local book stores.

Answer 2

Was it the same site that showed Elvis on the moon?

For the real lowdown and correct info about Mars go here:

http://www.mars.com/

In reality, the earth orbits at 1,429,000,000 km and Mars at 924,375,700 km so the closest they approach is approx 504,624,300km. So, to travel from Earth to Mars in 10 days would mean an average velocity of 2,102,601.25km per hour. This is quite fast, almost as fast as a Fiat 500 driven by an Italian through the Alps.

However it's easy to work out the acceleration assuming it constantly accelerates half way and then decelerates the last half.
S=0.5*a*t^2 where S=distance, a=acceleration, t=time.

So 207,312,150,000=0.5*a*432000^2 (using m and s)

This will give you acceleration in ms^-2. You can then compare it to g=9.81ms^-2, acceleration due to earth's gravity, to see how feasible it theoretically is. It makes for an interesting result given the apparently high average velocity.

Answer 3

Have any of you ever heard of ion drive propulsion?? That's how you spread acceleration out over a period of time and gradually build it up to a reasonably usable velocity. We've been using ion drives for various purposes, such as station keeping for satellites, for over 40 years!!!.

The latest advance in the technology, the Helicon Double Layer Thruster, invented in Australia, can produce much more thrust than the current and proposed drives being considered for use on spaceships and satellites. It's more efficient and economical and doesn't need to use heavy fuels such as Xenon to create heavy ions for thrust. It uses ordinary Hydrogen gas (stored as a liquid) for its fuel.

The new ion drives (the HDLT and the NASA VASIMR) will be able to power spacecraft up to such high velocities that the trip to Mars, normally taking over 180-250 days using conventional chemical and other proposed propulsion methods, would be cut to a matter of a couple of weeks......the top estimate is 30-45 days.

Answer 4

I'm pretty sure that nobody is planning on doing this in the near future
but there was discussion of a hydrogen nuclear solution - basically using
hydrogen bombs as accelerants - they are comparitvely light so they could
get you accelerating at 1G for 5 days out and then decelerating at 1G for
5 days to the planet.

However, there is, as of yet, no technology which would allow you to spread
out the acceleration, we haven't created the necessary Mars-side technology
for landing a human and keeping them for any period of time, etc.

And nobody wants to use nuclear bombs as propellant. Nobody.

Something about "What happens if they go off aimed at Earth"?

Wimps! Wimps, I tell you... :)

Answer 5

Some years ago Professor Eric Braithwaite suggested that a bright young engineer, Alexander (Sandy) Kidd, might have invented a potential star drive. However, I have heard nothing further.

Answer 6

I doubt we could send a human there in ten days and expect him to survive with current tech.

Answer 7

I think NASA will be sending more sophisticated robots up first.